Dolphin started out as a GameCube emulator in 2003. In 2008, experimental Wii support was added. And now, in 2026, Dolphin enters the realm of arcade emulation with support for the Sega, Namco, and Nintendo arcade effort, the Triforce, finally arriving. Want to learn more about the Triforce? Check out our deep dive into the Triforce and how it ended up back in Dolphin!
Emulating a new system and library of games for the first time in 18 years is big news, and we'll dive into some details and updates on that later in the report. However, there are two other major additions that would have been flagship changes on their own in any other report. Optimizations to Dolphin's MMU emulation have brought major performance uplifts to games that rely on custom page table mappings. In fact, on powerful hardware, all Full MMU games can run full speed, including the legendary Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike.
On the other side of things is a targeted fix that took an inordinate amount of effort. An epic tale that spanned years of frustration. In the end, the incredible efforts of the Mario Strikers Charged community combined with several CPU emulation experts finally cracked the case of a minor physics bug that would normally be impossible to see or test.
All that and more awaits in this release's jam-packed notable changes!

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Dolphin Release 2603 brings three major milestones: Triforce arcade system support (Sega/Namco/Nintendo joint hardware), massive performance improvements for Full MMU games via page table fastmem mappings, and a five-year fix for Mario Strikers Charged online desyncs caused by fmadds floating-point rounding errors. Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike now runs at full speed for the first time, doubling in performance. Additional changes include Wii Menu NAND timing improvements, a new option to load game discs into RAM for NAS users, and SDL hints GUI for controller configuration.

Dolphin Progress Report: Release 2603